Quito had a bosom friend, named Bunker, a white man and a hunter. Bunker might well have been ashamed of his name, as far as sound went, but he was not. He was proud of it. He was wont to say, sometimes, that “the Bunkers was comed of a good stock, an’ had bin straight-for’ard hunters in the Rocky Mountains, off an’ on, for nigh a century, an’ he hoped he would never disgrace his forefathers.” There was no fear of that, for Bunker was as sturdy, and honest, and simple-minded a man as ever shot a grizly bear, or trapped a beaver. He, too, was fond of meditation, and had great delight in the society of Quito. On his way home the young Indian met with Bunker, who said he was going to visit some traps, but that he would follow his friend’s trail the next day, and might perhaps overtake him before he reached his village. It was a beautiful autumn evening when Quito approached his mountain home. Not the finest park of the greatest noble in our land could compare with the magnificent scenery through which the Indian walked, with his gun on his shoulder, and his yellow leathern garments—fashioned and richly wrought by the fingers of Laughing-eye—fluttering with innumerable fringes and other ornaments in the gentle breeze. His dark eye glanced from side to side with that sharp restless motion which is peculiar to red Indians and hunters of the far west, whose lives are passed in the midst of danger from lurking enemies and wild beasts, but the restless glance was the result of caution, not of anxiety. Quito’s breast was as calm and unruffled as the surface of the lakelet along whose margin he walked, and, although he kept a sharp look-out, from the mere force of habit, he thought no more of enemies at that time than did the little birds which twittered in the bushes, unconscious and unmindful of the hawk and eagle that soared high over head. There were woods and valleys, through which flowed streams of limpid water. Here and there were swamps, in which thousands of water-fowl and frogs filled the air with melody, for the frogs of America are a musical race, and a certain class of them actually whistle in their felicity at certain periods of the year; their whistle, however, is only one intermittent note. Elsewhere undulating plains, or prairies, gave variety to the scene, and the whole was backed by the lofty, rugged, and snow-clad peaks of the vast mountain range which runs through the whole continent from north to south.